In 2008, Cabot Oil and Gas started
fracking operations in Dimock, Penn. It was around that time the
community started noticing their water was turning brown and making
people and animals sick. One woman’s water well
exploded. Fracking had come to town.
It’s a familiar story in other
rural communities—from Pennsylvania to Montana and Texas—where
fracking has contaminated drinking water resources and emitted toxic
air pollution associated with higher rates of asthma, birth
defects and cancer.
But the story is similar in other
communities where fracking or other extreme fossil fuel extraction
isn’t happening. Air and drinking water that’s been dangerously
polluted from industrial operations affect communities across Iowa,
including the state’s largest city, Des Moines. Polluting
facilities are operating in Central Oregon, North
Carolina, Wisconsin and Maryland. None of those places are
fracking, but they are host to another environmental hazard facing
rural communities: factory farms.
Like the fossil fuel cartel, this
highly consolidated industry prioritizes profits at the cost of our
environment. Factory farms are an industrial model for producing
animals for food where thousands of cows, pigs or birds are raised in
confinement in a small area. While farms can and do apply manure as a
fertilizer to cropland, factory farms produce more manure than nearby
fields can absorb, leading to runoff into surface waters and
contaminants leaching into groundwater. And storing concentrated
quantities of manure releases toxins like ammonia and hydrogen
sulfide into the air, threatening nearby communities—and even
leading to worker deaths. The nearly half a million dairy cows on
factory farms in Tulare County, Calif., produce five times as
much waste as the New York City metropolitan area and carries
chemical additives and pathogens like E. coli, many of which are
antibiotic resistant.
Factory farms are also an issue of
environmental injustice. In North Carolina counties that contain hog
factory farms, schools with larger percentages of students of color,
and those with greater shares of students receiving free lunches
are located
closer to hog farms than whiter and more affluent schools.
Just like with fossil fuel infrastructure, these toxic facilities are
more likely to be in places that are least able to resist their
development.
Another thing factory farms have in
common with fossil fuels: They are a danger to the climate. Livestock
production contributes 14.5
percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Methane emissions from the digestive processes of cattle contribute
39 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production,
and manure storage and processing contribute 10 percent.
Additionally, monoculture crops like corn and soy are a hallmark of
our highly consolidated food system and are one of the reasons we can
raise mass quantities of livestock. These crops contribute nearly
half of the emissions from the sector. Meanwhile, more sustainable
meat production methods like smaller farms and grass-fed operations
may have lower greenhouse gas emissions than factory farms. Without a
rapid transition away from factory farming, we will not avoid
catastrophic climate change.
Yet attempts to regulate factory
farms have been weak-kneed and ineffective. For example, federal law
requires they report significant releases of toxic pollutants like
ammonia. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) actually does
little to monitor, much less prevent, these emissions. In 2009, for
example, the agency rolled
back regulations so that only the largest facilities had to
report these emissions—and only to local, not national, emergency
response officials. In 2018 Congress went even further, granting
an exemption from reporting requirements for air emissions
created by manure on farms. Similarly, the EPA does
not collect comprehensive data on factory farm size or
location, making oversight impossible. And while the Clean Water Act
regulates water pollution from industrial facilities, the EPA has
looked the other way; the agency estimated in 2011 that less than
half of the facilities required to get discharge permits had actually
obtained them.
Calls to ban fracking have been
proliferating since we have found that it is too dangerous to simply
regulate. The inherent risks to our environment, our climate, and our
communities are simply too much.
Now, we need to say the same thing
about factory farms. Both industries are putting rural communities at
risk so that large polluting companies can become larger and more
profitable. Climate advocates who are already facing down the fossil
fuel industry should find common cause with those who are fighting to
stop industrial agriculture in their community.
Systemic change is needed. We can’t
shop our way out of the damage that is being done to our environment
by simply choosing to reduce meat consumption or ride bikes to work.
While these are meaningful steps, we must also demand policy action.
It’s time to reverse the decades of pro-industry policy that have
made Big Ag and Big Energy bigger and badder, and create policies
that start phasing out pollution from agriculture and energy.
We know how to do it: We need to
demand meaningful laws and regulations—including bans on new
polluting factory farms and fossil fuel infrastructure—that
prioritize people over profit. This is already happening at the state
level in places like Iowa,
but we need to work at all levels, starting now, to enact the changes
we need to protect our environment, our water and our communities.
>> The article above was written by Wenonah Hauter, and is reprinted from YES! magazine.
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